Scientists Say Our Black Hole Has a Sluggish Appetite

Attempting to understand the massive complexities of our universe is an interesting, albeit nearly impossible, task. So when scientists are able to detect new findings within our own galaxy, it calls for some celebration. Thinking of the intimidating nature of space, nothing screams scarier than the invisible material of a black hole. A black hole is focused on destroying anything it can get its mouth around, helping it grow in size. But scientists have found that our black hole has a much more sluggish appetite compared to its counterparts.

Our galaxy’s black hole, Sagittarius A*, is said to have as much power as 4 million suns, but it only raids it’s food supply a very limited amount of time. Now, new research is suggesting that a mature star may key us in on this strange behavior.

The star, known as Pulsar, has uncovered a magnetic field of radio waves that travel through a region that, when waves pass, can change direction affecting the potency of our magnetic field. Pulsars belong to a subgroup associated with what’s called magnetars. These hold astonishingly high magnetic fields, which is 100,000 billion times that of the magnetic fields on Earth. This strength plays an important part. The black hole slowly swallows everything, including light and depending on it’s strength, the magnetic fields can aid or hinder this process.

Astronomer Henio Falcke and his team of researchers have been one of the many astronomers in the last 20 years whom have dug for information on the possibility of a pulsar around our galaxies black hole. So it was to their delight when they made the recent discovery and published their findings in the journal for Nature.

Amongst the study, Falcke and these scientists were also able to measure Pulsar’s strength and found that the star was quite bright and large.

So how do these scientists explain our black hole’s sluggish appetite? Not so simply. They believe that our magnetic field is in due part associated with ionized gas, which explains the radio to X-ray emission often associated with our black hole, making it less satisfied in comparison to other black holes.

With all the new findings, we still do not understand what happens inside a black hole. And while there are crazy theories out there, we only know that once you’re in, it’s forever. Not one thing is fast enough to escape it’s wrath. Not even the speed of light. Thinking of all the galaxies in our universe (which is a crazy amount), there’s a hungry black hole within them all.

But luckily, with the help of intelligent scientists on this planet, we are better able to understand the nature of our very own black hole and its sluggish appetite.